Hymns: 107 v1,2 / 107 v3,4
Volume 4: The Battle of Armageddon – Part 2
Back in May I summarized the first half of volume four, and we left off with Br. Russell’s illustration of a court proceeding to describe the judgment against Babylon. Charge after charge of greed, selfishness, hypocrisy and a lack of love were read in the Arraignment of Babylon before the Great Court. Some of the charges were in the form of lengthy quotes from the journals of Pastor Russell’s day. The discontent of the masses of common people was particularly noted, as the fuel that would feed the fire of anarchy which would complete the destruction of the old order. Our lesson today begins with a continuation of the court proceeding, the arraignment of Babylon, with the next witnesses to declare their charges against her.
Chapter Eight – The Cries of the Reapers
Chapter eight is titled, The Cries of the Reapers. The theme text is James 5:1-4:
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you,
and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by
fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them which have reaped, are entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth. (Hosts)
Br. Russell begins by extolling the virtues of the agrarian life, noting that farmers have always been stable, conservative, even godly people, due to their close connection to the soil and nature. But as the twentieth century dawned, advances in technology and farm machinery gave the farmer greater crop yields and access to worldwide markets. And so, the once insulated farmers now found themselves more closely connected to the pace and turmoil and greed of the city. In the closing decade of the eighteen hundreds, crop prices were depressed, and many farmers teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. It was a hard time to be a farmer, and making the difficulty even worse was the fraud of James 5:4 by which the rich men had held back the hire of the reapers. What was this fraud? It was a federal law passed in 1873 that demonetized silver. On pages 393 and 394, Pastor Russell explains it this way:
We believe the prophecy to apply to farmers in general, who are the world's food producers, "reapers";… and shall endeavor to prove, that all these requirements of the prophecy are met in the demonetization of silver. The demonetization of silver by Christendom is of advantage to certain classes and of disadvantage to other certain classes in "Christendom."
It is of disadvantage to the growers of wheat, rice and cotton, because they must sell these products of their energy in competition with the products of countries doing business on a silver basis, and hence practically they sell for depreciated silver; while their land, implements, clothing, labor and the interest on mortgages on their property are all payable in enhanced gold. If they receive pay in silver and pay out the same sum in gold they lose just one half--when gold is double the value of silver. In 1873, before silver was demonetized by the nations of Christendom, a silver dollar was worth two cents more than a gold dollar, while today, in consequence of that legislation, it requires two silver dollars to equal a gold dollar…
Now you may be rolling your eyes and thinking that the demonitization of silver is such a trivial historical detail, that perhaps Br. Russell’s interpretation of James 5:4 is so out of date as to be incorrect. Not so. Let me tell you two of the most powerful economic forces of today that are the direct results of the demonitization of silver. They are international currency trading, and credit card debt. Without the demonitization of silver in 1873, there would be no talk of the strong dollar and the weak yen, or an interconnected global economy. Nor would there be MasterCard, Visa, or Discover Card. If you have the time and interest, look up two entries in any good encyclopedia: “money,” specifically the history of paper money, and “gold standard”. I’ll give you the two-minute version.
Prior to 1873, banks issued certficates that could be redeemed for actual gold, and banks also issued certificates that could be redeemed for actual silver, and the price of gold and silver was fixed by the banks and the government. After 1873, that was no longer true for silver, and so the United States was said to be on the “gold standard.” In 1913, the Federal Reserve, our central bank was created and authorized to issue certificates backed by neither silver nor gold, (that’s what you have in your wallet – it says “Federal Reserve Note” across the top) and in 1971 the United States went off the gold standard. Today our currency’s value (and that of all countries’) is set by a market between the central banks of each nation and money traders around the world. This market is often volatile and sometimes harmful to a few nations, although most of the time, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan makes it work to the advantage of Americans. One of the levers the Federal Reserve operates is interest rates which determine the supply of money available for loan by banks who issue credit cards to just about anybody when they have a lot of money to loan out and can make a profit on the interest.
That’s a huge simplification of how the demonitization of silver led to international money trading, the Federal Reserve, and MasterCard. Now, it must be admitted that all of us in this room enjoy a nice standard of living, made possible in large part by the managing of our economy by the Federal Reserve. But I have long believed that the final destruction of this present evil world will begin not with international tension, racial division or social unrest. Rather, the spark that ignites the final battle of Armageddon will be the collapse of the global economy under the crushing burden of debt incurred by individuals and nations. And when the history of that collapse and the transition from this present evil world to the kingdom is written, a key event recorded in that history will be the demonitization of silver in 1873 which began the fulfillment of James 5:4.
Chapter Nine – The Conflict Irrepressible
Chapters nine and ten go together as a pair. Chapter nine is titled, “The Conflict Irrepressible – The Testimony of the Worldly-Wise,” and it consists entirely of, as the title suggests, quotations of noted statesmen, journalists, clergymen, even a Supreme Court Justice, and others in Br. Russell’s day, whose opinions were respected. The essence of these commentators’ observations is that the strain between rich and poor, along with a decline in morals, is tearing society apart, and there’s no real solution to the world’s ills in sight. Chapter ten is titled, “Proposed Remedies – Social and Financial,” and it includes a list of proposed remedies such as Prohibition, Protective Tariffs, Socialism, Communism, Nationalism, and even Anarchy as a remedy!
I have two comments regarding Chapter nine. First, I was struck by the sincerity of the expressions Br. Russell quoted. It was interesting reading to me, and I found myself wishing that today’s political debate was of the same high quality. If I were to update this chapter to the 1990’s, I would say the issues haven’t changed, the strain between rich and poor, the decline in morals, but what has changed is a decline in the quality of our civil leadership. Again, as in so many other cases, Br. Russell saw with amazing clarity, the small beginnings in his day, of developments that have simply grown larger and worse in the last hundred years.
My second comment on chapter nine is how cleverly Pastor Russell juxtaposes conflicting arguments he quoted. For example, a suggestion that more education of the masses might be the answer was followed by a countering argument that the source of the discontent among the farmers was too much learning! This paragraph on page 453 sums up the entire chapter:
It is the same throughout the whole civilized world. All intelligent people see the dilemma more or less clearly, but few have anything to suggest as a remedy. Not all however: some well-meaning people think that they can solve the problem, but only because they fail to get the situation clearly outlined before their mental optics.
Chapter Ten – Proposed Remedies – Social and Financial
Chapter ten, again, is titled Proposed Remedies – Social and Financial. The remedies are offered mostly by sincere thinkers who desire to create a Utopia of peace and prosperity for all. I won’t review any of them in detail. Many of these we studied in high school history and sociology. The point of listing all these ineffective proposed remedies is not only to demonstrate their ineffectiveness, but also to show that mankind has had ample opportunity to heal itself without success. Every type of self government has been thought of, tried, and failed. In the kingdom, no one will ever say, “We could have made this happen on our own. We didn’t need God and Jesus and the highway of holiness.”
Near the end of the chapter, Br. Russell declares the real remedy, the only true remedy, the Millennium, and then he asks and answers an interesting question on page 521 in a subhead titled, The Proper Attitude of God’s People.
But some may inquire, What must we who see these things in their true light do now? Shall we if we own vacant land give it away or abandon it? No; that would serve no good purpose unless you gave it to some poor neighbor actually needing it: and then, should he make a failure of its use, he doubtless would censure you as the author of his misfortunes.
If we are farmers or merchants or manufacturers, shall we attempt to do business on the Millennium basis? No; for, as already shown, to do so would bring upon you financial disaster, injurious to your creditors and to those dependent on you, as well as upon your employees.
We suggest that all that can now be done is to let our moderation be known unto all men: avoid grinding anybody; pay a reasonable wage or a share of the profits or else do not hire; avoid dishonesty of every form; "provide things honest in the sight of all men"; set an example of "Godliness with contentment," and always by word as well as by example discourage not only violence, but even discontent; and seek to lead the weary and heavy laden to Christ and the word of God's grace--through faith and full consecration.
Chapter Eleven – The Battle of Armageddon
Chapter Eleven is titled, The Battle of Armageddon, same as the title of the book
In a subhead entitled Two Remarkable Types of the Impending Catastrophe, Pastor Russell cites the destruction of Israel in the harvest of the Jewish Age as one type, and more recently the French Revolution as a second type. He quotes historians who give the causes of the French revolution as including: the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, oppression of the masses, hostility toward the privileged classes, better educated lower classes, loss of respect for royalty, corruption and waste in government, trade monopolies, and abortive attempts at reform. Sounds like 1999, doesn’t it? And indeed Pastor Russell thought it sounded like 1897, saying that the same forces that led to the French Revolution a hundred years earlier, were prevalent in his day.
Now listen to this eerily predictive statement from page 535 and remember what started World War One:
When the conditions are fully ripe for the great Revolution a most trivial circumstance may serve as a match to set on fire the present social structure throughout the whole world; just, for instance, as in the case of the French Revolution, the first overt act, it is said, was the beating on a tin pan by a woman whose children were hungry. Soon an army of mothers was marching to the royal palace to ask for bread. Being refused, they were joined by the men, and soon the wrath of the nation was kindled and the flames of revolution swept the whole land.
The other major point pastor Russell makes about the French Revolution, besides how similar his day was to back then, is that the character of the violence and upheaval was retributive. Retribution against the oppressive institutions of France – civil and ecclesiastical was the hallmark of the reign of terror. Kings and nobles were executed without mercy or even due process of law. The country that slew Protestants at the Pope’s bidding in an earlier century now imprisoned Pius VI himself, confiscated the Catholic Church’s lands and cathedrals, and formally abolished the Roman Catholic religion
Updating to 1999, we might think of the French revolution as such ancient history as to be a poor illustration of the impending conflict. After all, what about the Russian revolution, the two world wars, the Holocaust, and in the last few years, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo? Actually, those horrors, and they all were horrors, were of a different nature than the retributive violence of the masses against their institutions in the French revolution. I think the French Revolution is still the best model to study for a hint of what the future holds even in our own country. Volume Four needs no updating in this part.
Next is a discussion the prophecy of the Lord’s Great Army in Joel 2:2-11. Listen to a part of that description from page 544:
The earth [the present social order] shall quake before them: the heavens [the ecclesiastical powers] shall tremble: the sun and the moon [the illuminating influences of the gospel and of the Mosaic law] shall be dark [general infidelity having become widely prevalent], and the stars [the apostolic lights shall be obscured] shall withdraw their shining [the dark night will have come wherein no man can labor]--And the Lord shall utter his voice before his army; for his camp is very great; for he is strong that executeth his word; for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can abide it?"